The Great Green Wall: A Progress Report on Africa's Ambitious Initiative

Eighteen years after its launch, the Great Green Wall initiative—a pan-African project to combat desertification—has restored a small fraction of its target area, according to United Nations data.

While international donors have pledged billions in funding, implementation has been hampered by coordination issues, funding disbursement delays, and challenges adapting techniques to local environments. Project officials state the challenges reflect the complexity of a multinational effort, while some researchers report minimal ecological benefits from early reforestation efforts.

Project Overview and Goals

The African Union launched the Great Green Wall initiative in 2007. The original vision was to plant a belt of trees across approximately 4,350 miles (7,000 kilometers), stretching across 11 Sahel nations from Senegal to Djibouti.

The initiative's broader goals included restoring nearly 250 million acres of degraded land, sequestering 250 million tons of carbon, and creating millions of jobs to address poverty and food insecurity in the region.

Reported Progress and Assessments

Multiple sources cite a 2020 United Nations report which found that 13 years into the project, approximately 4% of the targeted land had been restored.

A 2025 study published in the Land Use Policy journal examined 36 project plots covering nearly 45,000 acres in Senegal. The researchers reported that only one plot was measurably more green than it would have been due to natural rainfall patterns. The study concluded that the ecological benefits of the reforestation efforts surveyed were "minimal to nonexistent" and that social impacts were "periodic and short-lived."

Senegal officials, however, claim to have restored approximately 850,000 hectares of land since the project's inception.

Implementation Challenges and Case Studies

Early Technical Approach

Initial large-scale tree-planting efforts in the late 2000s resulted in high mortality rates for saplings. Agronomist Dennis Garrity, former head of the World Agroforestry Center, stated that studies had shown such initiatives in low-rainfall regions typically lead to failure. The project later shifted from a focus on literal tree walls to broader land restoration and agroforestry approaches.

Coordination and Funding Tracking

The Pan-African Great Green Wall Agency has cited challenges including "funding issues to match the ambitions, coordination, national technical capacities, heterogeneity of contexts, public security in certain countries, and coordination of financing at the national level."

• Gilles Ouedraogo of the UNCCD's Great Green Wall Accelerator noted there are "serious problems with coordination at the national level," stating that national Great Green Wall agencies are not always systematically involved in project implementation.
• Aminata Diallo, acting head of Senegal's Great Green Wall Agency, said it is "very difficult to track all this funding and all these projects in order to truly assess everything that is being done on the ground."

Local Project Examples

• Djibouti: A farm project in Kourtimale received $300,000 in funding for a borehole, solar pump, and dam. The farm initially produced crops but failed when the water system broke down due to drought, leaks, and pump failure. Abdoulfatah Arab, head of Djibouti's Great Green Wall department, stated the funding covered construction but not long-term maintenance or repairs. He reported his department has received $30 million over ten years, which he described as less than 10% of expected funding.

• Senegal: At an initial planting site in Widou Thiengoly, many of 10,000 saplings planted died within a few years. A geographer who visited sites in 2025 observed no visible difference from the air between project areas and the surrounding landscape.

• Chad: In Kanem province, an oasis restoration project supported by the nonprofit SOS Sahel used palm frond palisades to stabilize dunes and installed a solar water pump. The project supports over 300 farmers. While cited as a success, project funding ended in 2023, leaving the community responsible for future maintenance and repairs.

Funding Status

The United Nations originally estimated the project would require $33 billion to complete.

• In 2021, international donors pledged an additional $19 billion.
• By 2023, 80% of that $19 billion had been "programmed," but only 13% had been disbursed, according to project updates.
• Other major contributors over the years include the Green Climate Fund ($14.4 billion over a decade), the European Union (over $1.78 billion between 2021-2023), the World Bank, the African Development Bank, and various United Nations agencies.

The Pan-African Agency has stated that "despite intensified advocacy efforts... the level of funding mobilized has remained well below the planned needs."

Official Response and Regional Context

In response to challenges, the Pan-African Great Green Wall Agency stated that the problems "are not indicative of failure, but rather reflect the complexity of a multi-country, multi-sector initiative that is the first of its kind." The agency noted there is new leadership and "a lot of goodwill" to advance the agenda.

The project operates in a challenging regional context:

• The Sahel region is experiencing temperatures rising 1.5 times faster than the global average.
• Over 135 million people in the region depend on degraded land for survival, according to U.N. data.
• Several participating countries have experienced political instability since the initiative began.